


Flickers

by themoonandmargot



Category: Smosh
Genre: Angst & Tension oh my !, Confessing Feelings, First Kiss, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Mutual Pining, just two gays being dumb and dramatic in public
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-08
Updated: 2019-06-08
Packaged: 2020-04-12 16:14:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19135582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themoonandmargot/pseuds/themoonandmargot
Summary: Stuck along the sidewalk, stopped beside a storeFlickering between them, flickering something more





	Flickers

**Author's Note:**

> in another universe, in the morning, he asks you why you look at him like that.
> 
> you grin, your quirked brow brushing against the sheets. _like what?_ you ask back. _like you got a... booger or somethin’?_
> 
> he laughs, then pushes his head further up his pillow, allowing you a clear view of his nostrils. _i mean, no. but do i?_
> 
> he does not, not that it matters. you giggle with him and bring your hands to his waist. he softens, glows in your grasp, then shrugs.
> 
> _you look at me… like i’m the entire universe._

“You’re thinking so hard, I can hear it.”

Shayne blinks, the blur of the streetlights turning tangible before him. The two of them are walking, have been walking, and as Shayne looks to Damien beside him, he realizes walking and thinking have done a good job of shutting him up tonight.

Sheepishly, he chuckles. "Am I?"

"Yeah, you were thinkin' _hard._ About what, I have no idea."

“Uh… I was just thinking about how all the stores and restaurants close early here,” Shayne says, half-truthful. In all honesty, it’s a thought that’s already crossed and left his mind five brainwaves ago. But it’s easier than funneling the current wave into words. “Like, it looks and feels like a city, but it operates like a small farming town in... friggin’, Nowhere, USA.”

Damien titters. “Yeah. And it’s cold.”

 _A cold not-city._ Shayne nods, understanding somehow. “And it’s cold,” he adds.

Saying it aloud reminds him that his fingers are freezing, so he stuffs his hands in his jacket pockets. Then it’s quiet again, just boots on concrete with a slight whisper of wind, and Shayne wishes he could switch his brain back to his last train of thought but he can’t. Instead, he pushes an audible shiver out his mouth and pulls the conversation back between them.

“What do you mean, ‘I can hear it’? How can you _hear_ me thinking?” he asks, glancing at Damien.

Damien shrugs. The lamppost beside him traces light across his features and leaves sharp shadows in its path. “I mean, I don’t actually hear it as much as I sense it,” he says. “I think it’s in your eyes. They flicker around.”

Shayne guffaws. “You couldn’t even see my eyes just then!”

“You don’t know that.”

“Uh, I think I would’ve noticed if you turned to me and started staring at my eyes.”

“I think you were thinking too hard to notice.”

Damien leans forward, smirk wide and hands clasped behind his back—the picture definition of “shiteating”. Shayne only scoffs, pulling his arms and his smile closer to him. God forbid he lets Damien know just how right he is.

Damien knows regardless. “So, what were you thinking about anyway?” he asks.

Shayne frowns. “I already told you, the ‘nothing’s open at night’ thing–”

“No, but what were you _really_ thinking about?” Damien pushes, and Shayne can’t help but find it all incredibly strange and maybe a tad annoying. Damien isn’t the type to push about anything—except dumb stuff, like anime marathons or trips to In-N-Out, but nothing about this is quite dumb enough for Damien to deem worthy of pushing.

At least, Shayne wishes his thoughts were dumb enough, because maybe then he’d feel better about talking about them.

“I… was thinking about living here. Not here exactly, I mean, but… I don’t think I’d mind settling down in a place like this, when everything’s said and done. Just a quiet town, not too little but not too large.”

Damien purses his lips and nods. “Hmm. Yeah, I get that. It’d fit you, I think.”

So like that, Damien is satisfied. Shayne knows he could leave it there. But the good reception from Damien (and the hope bubbling in his gut) spurs him on further, spills more of his thoughts onto the cracked pavement below them.

“And I dunno, I always thought it’d be cool if—y’know, if we ever decided our YouTube days were over, and–” _if I never found someone similar enough to you–_ “if you were down, then maybe we’d find our own apartment or something and just live the days out together.”

It’s awful, how the same words Shayne had cultivated and picked apart in his head suddenly turn sad once they’re in his mouth. He waits for Damien to react in the wrong way—maybe he’ll politely reject the idea, or on the flip side, he’ll eagerly accept it for reasons that are purely, painfully platonic.

Then Damien does neither. Rather, he _laughs,_ a strangely bitter thing, and smiles at the ground. “You wouldn’t want to be stuck with me for that long, would you?” he says.

Damien might as well have struck Shayne across the face. _“What?_ What are you talking about?” he cries. “You’re my best friend, and you were my favorite roommate. Of course I’d want… I wouldn’t be _stuck_ with you, Damien. Of course I’d want to live with you.”

Shayne’s brows unfurrow as Damien lifts his head, just a bit. Then he feels his face soften, when Damien turns and looks at him.

Damien only laughs again, this time angling his chin towards the starry sky above. “God, why do you always look at me like that?” he bites, seemingly exhausted. “As if you have no idea what you’re doing.”

“I _don’t_ know what I’m doing,” Shayne replies, frowning. “I’m not doing anything.”

Damien marches on, solemn. Shayne matches his pace, keeping his eyes trained on Damien. Shayne doesn’t recognize this Damien, the version of his best friend that’s cold and withdrawn. He doesn’t even look like he can stand and wait with him when they come to a crosswalk.

But Damien feels it, too, the sweaty, sticky hope in his palms. He needs to confirm this, just this once—and Damien turns to really look at Shayne for the first time tonight, really soaks in the way Shayne’s mouth falls open for the tiniest intake of breath and the way Shayne’s eyes stutter across his face and the way Shayne can look at him like he’s the _entire goddamn universe_ —and it’s too real, too close, and too much for Damien to handle.

So the little stickman glows white across the street and Damien grasps on to it like his own personal olive branch. “Never mind, forget I said anything. I’m just talking out of my ass tonight,” he grits, regret washing over his features.

Thing is, Shayne can read Damien just as well as Damien can read him, and now they’re reading the exact same thing. Deep down, they both know why Damien can't wait for Shayne when the streetlight spurs them forward. They both know why Shayne keeps up but says nothing, nearly stepping on Damien’s heels.

Because now it’s got nothing to do with oblivion. It has everything to do with fear.

So Shayne finally drains out the thoughts, the brainwaves, everything kept close to him for the entirety of their walk, everything from the past nine years. “Okay,” he breathes, voice wavering. “Okay, no, we’re talking about this.”

Damien stares ahead, seemingly unaffected. “Talking about what?”

Shayne opens his mouth, but the twisting fear in his gut keeps has him blubbering once again. “This,” he repeats, uncertain, before waving his hands in the air between them. “ _This._ Whatever it is.”

“What if I don’t want to talk about this?” Damien sighs.

“Obviously neither of us want to, but we have to. It’s just gonna eat at us if we don’t.”

“And it’s gonna ruin us if we do.”

It's already too close to the truth than both of them are comfortable, but Shayne persists. “Damien, that’s not true. We wouldn’t let that happen.”

“I only care about this _because_ we wouldn’t let that happen! Because our friendship matters more to me than whatever _this_ is!” Damien stops in his tracks, leaving the both of them stranded on the sidewalk. “I didn’t wanna spell it out for you, Shayne, but I can never tell if you do half the things you do just because we’re best friends, or because… I…”

Damien looks down, the tops of his cheeks splotching with red, and Shayne fears the pull in his own limbs, the way he wants to smooth down the hair behind Damien’s ears and assure him that everything is okay. The pause makes Damien turn and face the untraveled sidewalk before them. He avoids Shayne’s eyes as he trudges forward, voice traveling with him. “It’s just not worth it.”

Like a twisted type of déjà vu, Shayne finds himself trailing after Damien for the second time that night. “And then what? Pretend this entire night never happened?” Shayne reasons. “Damien, I know you’re just scared. I’m scared, too. But the possibility of… us realizing that there was nothing to be afraid of in the first place, is worth being afraid right now.”

“Maybe you’re not scared enough.”

“I’m scared shitless, Damien. You know that.”

“I don’t know anything, quit saying I know things.”

“Then listen.”

For a second, Shayne thinks he’s won Damien over. Then Damien mutters something into his chest— _fuck off, never should’ve said anything in the first place_ —and Shayne’s patience finally wears thin. “Damien!”

Shayne gets a warm hand on Damien’s arm, and for a moment he feels accomplished, until Damien actually stops and turns on his heel. _“Shayne,”_ he hisses, a warning in his wide, wet eyes.

“I don’t love you just like a friend,” Shayne chokes. “I don’t love you in ways that are normal for friends.” His free hand trembles, independent of the dry cold. He can’t help but feel like he’s just dropped a bombshell, a devastation of all the years of friendship behind them.

But this time Shayne’s eyes are set on the man in front of him, _unflickering,_ and Damien finds it so intense that he has to look away. He shakes his head, murmuring, “I don’t think you’re using that word right.”

Cautious, Shayne keeps his voice quiet. “I know I am.” He sees Damien clearly in the streetlights. Judging by the uncertainty across his best friend’s face, Shayne knows he’s got Damien, figuratively and literally. He still lets go, though, when Damien pulls his arm out from under his grasp.

Shayne fidgets, indecisive about keeping his hands in or out of his pockets. He settles on out-of-pockets, and it’s when his fingers go numb in the chill of the night that Shayne realizes just how much their truth can sting. “I’m sorry," he eventually says. "I hope… it’s okay that I told you that. But I meant everything I said. I swear.”

Damien is silent, his face vacant but his eyes processing. He licks his lips, then asks, voice low, "Everything?"

It’s a sudden shift in everything they’ve ever known. Damien waits, looking more lost than uncertain, but somehow that works for Shayne. He swallows. “Everything.”

Then he steps back with each step Damien takes forward, and soon Shayne's back hits the brick wall of the convenience store behind him. “But you didn’t mean anything by saying it," Damien murmurs.

Shayne is terrified, but he doesn’t move. “You just couldn’t hear what I was saying,” he whispers as Damien closes him in.

So now they’re here. Everything about Damien right now is intense, with a look that commands attention and the stance to enforce it. For Shayne, it’s an entirely vulnerable position— _stuck,_ between a cold body and a colder wall, but also on private feelings put on display for any passerby to see. They probably look like a couple. They probably look like another shadowy sidewalk figure imposing its intimacy on the entire world around them. Except they’re not, because right now it’s just he and Damien. They’re just best friends. But Shayne worries that that fact doesn’t make this any less incriminating.

No, decidedly not, as Damien lets out a breath and Shayne sighs back, two puffs of silver against the dark. They mist over into one, colliding, then escaping into the air. And Shayne stares, watches—eyes _flicker_ from visible breath, to invisible air, to Damien, to Damien, always to Damien.

All the while, Damien stares and watches Shayne. Maybe it's become all too obvious at this point. They don’t need words for the moment before them, nor the moment to come. But this time it’s Damien's heart pounding out of his chest, and it’s his thoughts running a million words a minute, and it’s his eyes that are _flick-flick-flickering_ —and Shayne truly understands, truly sees Damien as someone who’s always looked at him the same way Shayne’s looked right back, like he’s his entire goddamn universe, and like that look alone could destroy everything between them.

They’re so close, right on the verge of “all come tumbling down”. They just need one final push. So Shayne pushes.

“Stop thinking,” he says.

Damien snickers. For a moment, Shayne thinks he’s pushed too far, but then Damien tilts his head down to meet his eyes. The light from inside the store disappears from Damien’s face, and now it’s just them—just as it’s supposed to be.

Perhaps something about being alone makes them bolder. “You first,” Damien murmurs.

Shayne’s not sure he can. He feels his eyes flicker once, twice across the face before him. But then he looks past the face and sees Damien—everything he is, everything he wants to be.

He wants this. He wants them. And he wants Shayne to stop fucking thinking.

So as they close the gap between them, Shayne finally does.

**Author's Note:**

> you frown, though still incredibly smitten and ever-attached to his warmth. _that’s because i love you, you dummy. and you_ are _my entire universe._
> 
> he returns your kiss, strong and warm. but he leans back quickly. _why though?_ he asks, a sad laugh in his throat. _i’m just me._
> 
> you take a moment to look at him before shaking your head. _you’re not “just” you. you’re you. and i couldn’t be more grateful._ then you kiss him again, and again, proving that in any universe (particularly this one), “just you” will always love “just him”.
> 
> even if it’s scary. especially when it’s scary.
> 
> and amidst the flickers of fate, he believes you.


End file.
